2: WOUNDS
 

IT wasn't very surprising that Hem had not learned much of the Suderain language.  He had only recently arrived in Turbansk, after a two-week journey south with Saliman all the way from Norloch, the chief citadel of Annar.  They had fled the city as the it trembled on the brink of civil war, and Maerad and Cadvan had stayed behind, planning to escape that night and head north on a quest for the Treesong.  Nobody really knew what the Treesong was, but Hem, with the certainty of his twelve years, had perfect faith that Maerad would return triumphant, having not only discovered what the Treesong was, but having saved the world from the Dark as well.  For wasn't that what the old prophecies had said she would do?

That night, as he and Saliman galloped through the moonlit fields of the Carmallachan in the Vale of Norloch, Hem looked back over his shoulder and saw the towers of the ancient citadel in flame, with a great smoke spiralling upwards and obscuring the stars.  When at last they had stopped, Hem had passed the night in despair, sure that Maerad and Cadvan must be dead.  Saliman had consoled him, saying that Maerad and Cadvan were sure to have escaped, that there were secret passages which even Enkir did not know.  Hem just swallowed and hoped.  Beneath his boundless faith in Maerad's abilities was a dreadful fear that he would never see her again.

He didn't fully understand what had happened in Norloch, but Saliman explained that Enkir, the First Bard, and therefore the most important Bard in Annar, had revealed himself as a traitor against the Light.  Moreover, Enkir had destroyed Hem's family: it was Enkir who had overseen the sack of Pellinor ten years before, when Hem's father had been murdered and his mother and Maerad sold into slavery. Hem himself had been kidnapped by the Black Bards, the Hulls, under Enkir's orders, and put into an orphanage: a miserable prison where he had lived most of his short life with the other unwanted children of Edinur.  

Many of Hem's nightmares were about the orphanage; he would dream that he was still there, in a dank, pitch-black room crammed with children of all ages lying three or four to each stinking pallet, freezing cold in winter and sweltering in summer.  It was never quiet: children whimpered and muttered and screamed all night, even in their sleep.  Babies were put in with the rest of the children, and very few of them survived, although the older children tried to care for them. Hem had many memories of small blue corpses being taken out in the mornings. Sometimes what the children did to each other was worse than the neglect and careless brutality of the adults who ran the place: there was a vicious hierarchy among the orphans, reinforced by beatings and taunts, and any weakness was quickly identified and exploited.  There was never enough food, and the children often sickened and died from the illnesses which raged rapidly through the crowded buildings.  Only the tough survived; and luckily Hem was tough.  

He had been taken out of the orphanage by a Hull, who brought him to a fine house where, for the first time he could remember, Hem slept in clean sheets and had enough to eat.  But he was still afraid: the people in the house were sinister and cold, and he found out later they were all Hulls.  They had tried to make him become one of them, tempting him with their immortality.  They showed him that Hulls did not die: even if stabbed through the heart, a Hull would stand up again, smiling, the wound instantly closed over.  But a horrified instinct in Hem rebelled against their persuasions, which although softly spoken, with fair and reasonable words, caused icy chills to run down his spine.  

Finally, at the dark of the moon, the Hulls tried to make Hem a Black Bard by force.  Although he did his best to forget it, he remembered that night with a horrible clarity, and it too figured in his nightmares.  The Hulls had ordered him to kill a boy, a boy he knew from the orphanage.  When he had refused, despite their worst threats, they killed the child themselves, forcing Hem to watch, and burned his body in an ensorcelled fire.  Hem was then locked in his room without food and left alone, too frightened even to sob in the darkness.  

The next day the Hulls had been out on some foul errand, and by chance Hem was rescued by two Pilanel men who were robbing the house.  The Pilanel had been kind to him, taking him as one of their own because of his olive skin and Pilanel features; but the Hulls had tracked them down in the wilderness and mercilessly slaughtered the family who had cared for him.  Hem, hidden in the Pilanel caravan, had heard everything.

That was something else he had nightmares about.

After he had lain for hours in his cramped hiding place, too terrified to venture out, Maerad and Cadvan found him.  He had then discovered that not all Bards were Hulls, as he had thought. Finding that he had a sister, someone who belonged to him, someone who without question wrapped her warm arms around him when he cried out and trembled in his black dreams, was the most important thing that had happened to him in his whole life.  When he had been forced to leave her behind, he had felt as if his heart had been cut in two.  It was a loss he tried not to think about, because it hurt him too much.

Meeting Saliman was the second most important thing that had happened to him.  Despite his anxieties about Maerad, the ride to Turbansk with Saliman had been his first taste of real freedom.  The weather had stayed fine for most of the way, and although they feared pursuit from Norloch, he and Saliman had encountered no dangers.  After Hem's body had made the first painful adjustments to horseback, for riding made his legs so stiff that he thought he would walk with bowed legs for the rest of his life, the journey had been an unalloyed pleasure.  

Hem often wished he could ride again with Saliman through the mountains of Osidh Am, his favourite part of the whole journey.  They had camped at night by still pools in the fragrant forests of larch and fir, and Hem would lie back by the fire looking up at the bright stars through the branches high above him.  During the day they often surprised small herds of deer, which would leap up almost under the horses' feet to crash away through the bracken, and sometimes they brushed past bushes full of butterflies, which would start up in a cloud of bright colours about their heads.  

There were no other people for leagues, and a great peace began to rise in Hem's heart.  It was the happiest he had ever been.  On the other hand, his first sight of Turbansk, which was, Saliman told him, the most ancient city in Edil-Amarandh, had been bewildering and overwhelming. 

They had arrived at first light on a summer's day, just before the dawn bell.  The Great Bell of Turbansk, three times the height of a man, hung in a high belfry under a gilt cupola above the West Gate, one tower in that city of many towers which glowed like an opulent mirage on the shores of the Lamarsan Sea.  It was struck every day at the exact moment that the sun's disc appeared over the horizon.  

As it rang over the city, it seemed to Hem as if the sound itself was made of light. Sunlight and bellnote spilt simultaneously over market and tower, house and hall and hovel, picking out the glittering domes of the School and the Ernan and the Red Tower, flushing the stone walls pale pink or warm yellow.  The sun flooded the city's broad squares and trickled into the narrow alleys of the poor quarters, where the walls were painted in fading greens or blues or reds and fresh washing was strung over the street from house to house like colourful flags.  High above the city the tower windows flashed like huge diamonds, and on the great lake of Lamarsan a path of dazzling gold flared across the water.  

In the markets, which teemed with people hours before dawn, the flaming torches faded in the sudden increase of light and the world flooded with colour.  The dew sparkled on the roses and jasmine and saffron in the flower stalls, and rainbows quivered over the scales of trout and salmon, and on the iridescent feathers of freshly killed ducks and pheasants as they lay on the marble benches of food markets. 

From the food and flower markets spread a labyrinth of alleys lined with stalls and tiny shops, which sold everything from plain brass lamps to curious enamelled fortune-telling boxes which were used to predict the positions of the stars, from robes of diaphanous silk to thick linen tunics, from rings and brooches to knives and saucepans.  The tiny streets were packed with people: bakers walking with fresh loaves on trays balanced on their heads; donkeys and pack mules loaded down with huge panniers or sacks; farmers from the Fesse outside the city carrying baskets of dates or live ducks, their heads poking from the top; women in bright, embroidered robes, their fingers sparkling with rings; children squabbling and playing; and hawkers marching up and down, calling the virtues of their wares.  

There was a whole street of spice sellers, who sat behind their counters with bowls of precious ground spices before them, saffron tendrils and cardamom and whole nutmegs and cinnamon sticks; and then you would turn the corner and find a street of shops full of songbirds and finches, fluttering in cages of copper wire; and then the next was full of stalls with copper braziers, that sold tiny tin cups of black coffee and sweet honey-filled cakes and hot bean pastries, and jugglers and minstrels plied their trades for the gossiping customers.  

Hem stared amazed at the ordered chaos of Turbansk, his nostrils flaring. The streets were aromatic with spices from the hawker stalls and everyone, men and women, wore musky perfumes. As the heat of the day increased, the perfumes merged with other, earthier smells ­ rotting vegetables and sweat and waste ­ so that Hem felt faint, as if he were drugged in some sweet stupor and moved through a constantly changing hallucination. 

The people of Turbansk took great pleasure in personal adornment: at first Hem thought everyone in Turbansk must be fabulously rich, for he saw no one who did not wear golden earrings or bracelets or some intricately fashioned brooch.  Later he knew that those who were poor wore trinkets of brass, with glass jewels; but to Hem they seemed no less beautiful than emeralds and gold.  Nothing had prepared him for the rich colours and ceaseless movement, the countless men and women and children who moved with unerring grace through the teeming streets. To his astonishment, he saw no beggars: they were everywhere in Edinur.  He turned and asked Saliman if theyhad been banished from the city, and Saliman laughed.

"Nay, Hem, here the Light does its work.  No one goes hungry in Turbansk," he said.

Hem mulled over this in silence.  "Then won't people get lazy?" he said at last.

Saliman gave him a sharp look.  "What do you mean?"

"If they don't have to work for food, I mean."

Saliman stared ahead for a moment, as if revolving thoughts in his head.  "If a person doesn't want to work, that is their loss," he said at last.  "To make things, to care for what one loves, to earn one's place in the city, that is one of life's great pleasures.  It is not a Bard's business to tell people what to do: if they are hungry and ask for food, we give them something good to eat.  We have plenty, after all.  Then they are able to think what they might do best.  If their best is sitting in the gardens watching the carp in the pools, then so be it."

Hem blinked in surprise.  It seemed wrong to him, simply to give food away for nothing. 

The city of Hem's daydreams so far surpassed them that his expectations wavered like smoke and collapsed utterly.  He scarcely remembered his first week there; it passed in a blur of unfamiliar voices and words and colours and smells: the fresh touch of linen sheets against his skin; the silken caress of his new robes; the tastes of the food, which flamed along his tongue, making him choke and gasp; the hundreds of faces he saw in the streets every day, each one a stranger… Although Hem wasn't afraid, this sudden profusion of sensation induced something very like panic. In the midst of his confusion the only still point was Saliman, who, perceiving the chaos of Hem's mind, for that first week took him everywhere.  Hem haunted Saliman's footsteps like a little dog, never less than three paces behind him, as if he were the one rock in a turbulent and threatening world.

But in seven days the world stopped whirling and settled down, and Hem began to find his bearings.  He was instated into the School of Turbansk as a minor Bard and now wore on his breast a brooch in the shape of a golden sun, the token of a Bard of Turbansk.  Saliman told him to keep the medallion of Pellinor, which he had owned since he was a baby, in a cloth bag that he hung around his neck; it did not mark him as a Bard of Pellinor, but it told of his heritage.  

The Turbansk brooch, a gift from Saliman, pleased Hem much more than his lessons which, apart from swordcraft and unarmed combat, he found much more difficult than he had expected.  The study bored him, even the studies in magery, and he was at best a mediocre student.  

This puzzled Saliman, who believed Hem had a facility with magery.  He had taught Hem a few techniques on their journey to Turbansk and, when he had time, showed him mageries that caught the boy's fancy.  Hem was particularly adept with the charms to do with concealment, shadowmazing and glimveils, and had even mastered a disguising spell which was a speciality of Cadvan's, and which was particularly difficult.  Saliman suspected this ability might have to do with his life in the orphanage, when he had been forced to keep his Barding powers hidden, as anyone suspected of witchspeak ­ which was what the ignorant termed the Speech ­ might be stoned to death.  Yet in classes he acted the dullard, refusing to concentrate or focus his powers.

Shortly after their arrival in the Turbansk, to Hem's dismay, Saliman told Hem he had to leave Turbansk, and disappeared for a few days.  This was when Hem began to feel truly isolated.  Saliman would not tell him where he was going or when he would be back, and despite Hem's pleadings would not take him with him.  Hem felt it as a betrayal; a small betrayal, perhaps, but a betrayal nevertheless.  Saliman came back for a day and then vanished again, and Hem began to feel more lonely than ever.

During Saliman's absences the Turbansk Bards were kind to him, but Hem found this almost as bewildering Turbansk itself.  He simply wasn't used to being treated with courtesy.  The first time a Bard gave him the bow of greeting he had flushed red with anger, believing that he was being mocked; but fortunately Saliman was present and took him aside, explaining that it was the custom, and that he was simply expected to bow back. 

Most often his confusions erupted without warning into explosions of rage.  Perhaps Hem's greatest difficulty was that he didn't speak Suderain, but that might have been overcome if he had not also suffered from a deep mistrust of almost everybody who attempted to speak to him.  Within days his fellow students had dismissed him as surly and aggressive, and before long some were taunting him, provocations to which he always  responded violently.  By the time Hem rescued Irc, he had punched three minor Bards hard enough to warrant visits to the School healer for both parties, and once had even used magery against a student, a practice so strictly forbidden in the School that Urbika had told him sternly that he would be thrown out altogether if he ever did such a thing again.  
 
 
 

All this was in Saliman's mind as he contemplated his charge over the evening meal, a couple of weeks after Hem's escapade in Alimbar's garden.  Hem was proving a more testing responsibility than he had expected, although he did not regret his decision.  Underneath his exasperation, Saliman had grown to love this difficult, troubled boy, and he had a Truthteller's intuitive understanding of the contradictory emotions which were tearing Hem apart.  What he didn't know, he thought, was what to do about them.  

Hem was on his best behaviour, and so was acting as if he were made of wood; in his nervousness he had already knocked over a full glass of wine.  I am a healer, Saliman thought to himself, and counted great in that art in this city; but these wounds are beyond me.  Perhaps only Maerad could heal them… He thought of Hem's pale-skinned sister, in her own way almost as damaged and lonely as Hem was, and sighed.
Saliman had arranged to eat alone with Hem that night, and Hem, conscious of his sins, was unusually tense and silent in the Bard's company.  Only that morning he had endured yet another difficult interview with Urbika, who had patiently asked him why he felt obliged to use his single talent ­ that for unarmed combat ­ against his fellow students.

Hem had stood before her, silent and scowling.  He could not tell her that it was because Chyafa, the minor Bard whom he had, shortly before, left with a black eye, had called him a dirty white hlaf. Chyafa was Hem's principal enemy in Turbansk: a strongly built, handsome boy with an air of superiority who dropped his taunts with an air of carelessness which only intensified their sting. To report the insult was to compound Hem's humiliation: Hem understood enough Suderain to know what hlaf meant.  It was the word for carrion crow, which as an insult meant an ignorant barbarian, and it particularly hurt because it referred to Irc as well.  A number of other children had laughed at Chyafa's witticism and Hem knew then, with a sense of furious helplessness, that it had become their nickname for him.  

So he had said nothing, dumbly awaiting his punishment, and Urbika had pressed her lips tight with suppressed frustration.  She was having a trying morning.  Hem had been assigned the dawn duties for a week as a punishment, which meant waking before the first bell, shivering out of his bed in the dark hours before daylight to sweep out the Singing Hall and lay out the bowls and spoons for the other Bards, and then working in the kitchen, stirring great cauldrons of dohl, the dried beans which were boiled with fermented milk and sweetened with honey for breakfast.  

It was a mild punishment: privately Hem didn't mind these duties, since he liked Soron, who oversaw the kitchens.  He was a fair-haired, heavily built Bard from Til Amon, and he had a trick of wordless, unpatronising kindness.  He kept Hem supplied with meat for Irc, without Hem having to ask more than once, and gave him any sweetmeats left over from the previous evening, and never asked him questions about himself; which paradoxically meant that Hem was more chatty with Soron than with anyone except Saliman. 

Hem knew that Saliman was very busy; he had only that morning returned from one of his mysterious trips.  This probably meant that tonight's meal had been arranged because he wanted to say something particular.  Hem feared, again, that he was to be sent away, that this last outrage had torn even Saliman's patience with him.  He was so nervous that his appetite had disappeared, and he merely picked at the fresh fruits piled on the table, although among them were some of his favourites: mangoes (sent as a courtesy, Saliman told him ironically, from Alimbar's private garden), starfruit, pomegranates, figs, green melons and grapes.  

Irc, who had been granted special dispensation to come, was perched on the back of Hem's chair.  The bird had no such inhibitions, and gulped down the pieces of meat and fruit Hem fed him, wiping his beak on the boy's hair.  He then gave a content baby-like cheep and moved to Hem's shoulder, where he crouched close against his neck.  Abstractedly Hem reached up and scratched Irc's neck and the bird made little crooning noises, stretching out his head in bliss.

"Irc certainly looks well," said Saliman.  "You have been taking good care of him, for certain."

 "He likes me." Hem gave a small smile. "But only because I feed him."

"There is more to care than food," answered Saliman. "Though I agree that is an important part of it."  

"I've trained him not to do his droppings inside. Though it's taken a bit of persuasion," said Hem proudly.  "Eh, Little One?" Irc gave a sleepy chirp.

"Well, I am very glad of that."  

The conversation faltered again, and Saliman sat back, straightening his shoulders, and let out a long breath.  "Well, Hem," he said.  "There are a few things we must speak about together." 

Hem looked up, unable to conceal his agitation.  He had been waiting for Saliman to say something like this.
"What are we going to do?" asked Saliman.

Hem cleared his throat.  "Do?  About what?"

"About you, of course."  

There was a short silence while Hem mentally surveyed his catalogue of misdemeanours.  "I don't know," he said forlornly.

"In normal circumstances, I would know what to do," said Saliman.  "It would simply be a matter of time; you are not used to life as a Bard, and it is a difficult life to adjust to, even for those who come here without your troubles.  But time, I fear, is what we do not possess."

Hem slouched down in his chair, scowling at the table.  Did this mean that he was going to be thrown out?

"You know, Hem, that Turbansk is preparing for war."  

Everyone knew that.  Hem sat up straight again.  "Yes," he said.

"I'm not entirely sure that you know what that means," said Saliman.  "Which is why I wanted to talk to you tonight, although I should really be elsewhere.  We have had terrible news today: the Iron Tower has marched on Baladh."

Hem nodded. Baladh, he knew, was one hundred and fifty leagues east of Turbansk.  Like everyone else in the School, he had heard the news, which had arrived by bird courier that morning and spread through Turbansk like wildfire.  The students had been whispering about it in the corridors, shocked and subdued, and a girl whose family lived in Baladh had started crying in one of the classes and had been taken away by Urbika.

"We know very little yet about what is happening there," said Saliman.  "I am grieved; many friends live there, and I don't know how they are faring, or even if they are still alive.  Baladh is a School almost as old as Turbansk, and as venerable in the Knowing and the Lore.  If it falls, and I fear that it cannot stand, it will be a loss beyond calculation."

For a few moments the strain showed on Saliman's face and, for the first time that evening, Hem was jolted out of his self-absorption.  He stared at the Bard with surprise; Saliman's eyes were bright with unshed tears. Hem couldn't find the words to say what stirred in his heart, and he merely stammered, before falling silent.

"Well," said Saliman at length, "We will find out soon enough.  And if Baladh does fall, nothing but a few small towns and hamlets will stand between the armies of the Nameless One and Turbansk.  It will not be long before we too shall be facing the same fate."

For a few moments Hem felt himself fill with a black dread: this was the stuff of his nightmares, but unimaginably multiplied.

"In two weeks or so, perhaps less, perhaps more, Turbansk will be assailed by the Black Army," Saliman continued.  "I know we cannot expect any help from the north.  We will be lucky if he do not have an army marching on us from there as well, although I think Enkir still plays his double game.  Most Bards in Annar do not know of dealing with the Dark, and will believe what he says and mistakenly follow him; and I doubt not that he moves against all the Seven Kingdoms, from Lirigon in the north to Suderain in the south.  But all the kingdoms will resist, if that is what Enkir plans; and I think if he does move, it will be first against the western kingdoms, against Culain and Ileadh and Lanorial.  So, no threat from the north; but no help either."  Saliman's voice was quiet, as if he were speaking to himself, but Hem listened attentively.

"But will Turbansk really fall?" he asked, thinking of the power and pride of Turbansk, its thick walls and high towers, and its thousands of people.  "It is stronger and bigger than Baladh, isn't it?  Surely...?"

"Hem, I do not know if we shall prevail." Saliman smiled at him sadly.  "It may be that I was born to see the last days of this city I love so well.  Yes, we are mighty, and we are strong; but the force the Nameless One brings against us is the greatest seen since the Great Silence, when all Annar was conquered and the high cities of the Dhyllin cast to the ground.  I fear that against the darkness that rises now there shall be no prevailing."

There was no arguing against the bleakness of Saliman's voice, and Hem, whose mouth was open to ask another question, said nothing.  Saliman was silent for a time, lost in his thoughts, and then filled his glass again with wine.

"How do you know about the army?" Hem asked at last, to break the silence.  

Saliman looked up, startled out of his abstraction.  "I'm sorry Hem, I was thinking.  Where do you think I have been these past weeks?  I and others with me have been finding out what I can about this army.  The army that marches on Baladh is more than even Turbansk can resist."

Hem looked at Saliman with renewed respect, and felt guilty for his hard thought about Saliman's absences.  He had had no idea that Saliman was doing anything as dangerous as spying out the forces of the Nameless One.

"But, for all the hopelessness of our situation," Saliman continued, "we shall not despair.  I do not think we will hold Turbansk, but that does not mean that we will give it up without a fight."  

Although Saliman spoke quietly, a passion throbbed in his voice which sent a strange shiver went down Hem's spine, and he almost jumped up and shouted.  But Saliman, who was not given to passionate utterance, visibly mastered himself, and smiled at Hem.  

"Which brings me to you, Hem.  I ask again, what shall we do?  In a few days, all those who cannot fight, the old, the infirm, the children - and they include the younger students of Turbansk School - will be leaving for Car Amdridh, where there is more hope of holding out against the Black Army than there is here.  Shall you go with them?"

"No!"  It burst out of Hem before he could stop himself.  "Not if you're not going!  Don't send me away from you!"

Saliman stared gravely at Hem, and the boy looked down at the table, feeling foolish.  It was as clear a declaration of love as any he had made in his life.  But Saliman did not smile; his dark face was sad and thoughtful, and the gaze he cast on Hem was full of a strange tenderness.

"I have thought, for a number of reasons, that perhaps it would be better if you stayed with me," he said.  "But it seemed also to me like a mad thought. Life will be very dangerous here, and to stay here is to risk your life.  I will demand a lot of you, if you remain with me."

"I'll do anything you say," said Hem, his voice cracking with urgency.  He most profoundly didn't want to be sent away with the students: he did not want to be banished from Saliman's presence.  

"I will need you to be older than you are," said Saliman.  "I will need you to be larger than you think you are, to think beyond your own petty concerns.  I know you are capable of it."

Hem thought again of his behaviour over the past weeks, and regretted it sincerely for the first time.
"I promise," he said.  "I really do."

Saliman studied Hem coolly, as if weighing his value, and the boy blushed and bowed his head under the scrutiny.  "I don't want you to make a rash choice, Hem," the Bard said at last.  "I would not contemplate your staying if I thought it was certain you would be killed, but the risk, all the same, is very great, and it will be harder than you now think.  I do not walk safe paths."

Hem looked up, and now the passion blazing within him was naked in his eyes.  "I'll follow you anywhere," he said.  

There was a pause, and then Saliman smiled, but it was not a joyous smile.

"Hem, my heart tells me that, like Maerad, you have some task in this struggle," he said.  "I do not know what it is, but I believe it lies here, and not in Amdridh.  And I think it is right that you stay here, as you wish.  But it is not a decision I take without much misgiving."

There was a long silence while Hem struggled with a strange exhilaration.  He knew he ought to feel afraid, that he did feel afraid, but Saliman's promise to keep him in Turbansk filled him with a buoyant light.  Saliman, he thought, with a surprise which was almost painful, trusted him.

Irc, now wide awake, was bored by all the talk, and flapped onto the table to steal some food.

"That means Irc too, doesn't it?" said Hem, his eyes shining.  "I'm sure Irc can help?  He could carry messages... and..."

Saliman grinned suddenly, and all the strain seemed suddenly to vanish from his face.  "As long as he keeps his house manners," he said dryly.  "He does not eat so much as you, for all his greed, so perhaps we can afford him."

Irc gulped down his pilfered food and, knowing they were speaking of him, cocked his head.

You be good, said Hem sternly in the Speech.  Yes?

I good, said Irc, turning towards Hem and knocking over Saliman's glass, for the second time that night, with his tail.  

Saliman rolled his eyes upwards, and started mopping the table with a cloth.  Hem scrambled up to help him, radiant with an awkward joy he was unable to conceal.  For the first time since his arrival in Turbansk, he didn't feel unwanted and in the way.

It was going to be all right, he thought.  It was really going to be all right.

He was, of course, quite wrong.
 
 

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